Two Tier QAD Check Now Being Implemented by Some Companies

My writer friends have just contacted me with some disturbing news. It appears that some academic outsourcing companies have found a new way to keep even more money for themselves. They figured out that by implementing a two tiered "Quality Assurance" method, they can fine the writers twice for the same order instead of only once. They did this in the guise of "promoting" top tier writers in the company but adding a few duties and responsibilities to it. These new "Team Leaders" who have "Business Accounts" are now in charge of the following:

1. The ability to have up to 20 writers in their writer's pool. They may assign orders and remove orders at their whim. They are also in charge of deadline extensions and writer contact.

2. All submitted work will pass through the TL for preliminary screening, revision, editing, and low scale fining. BTW, all their fining decisions are final and will be supported by the QAD.

3. All writers payments will come through the TL already rather than from the company itself.

Now, this sounds to me like the perfect set up for a non negotiable fining system on 2 levels. The TL gets to fine the writer and keep some money for himself and then the QAD comes in with their own fines and keeps more money for the company. Writers are even more unsure now as to whether or not they will be paid and when. They can't even contact the Payment department for questions anymore regarding unpaid salaries.

From the looks of things, the writers could work very hard and achieve nothing in the end as in, they could come back in the negative and owe both the TL and the company money after the "QA" process is completed on both ends. It is slowly becoming clearer and clearer why more and more writers are simply trying to strike out on their own these days. These companies and TL:'s will nickel and dime the writers to death.

You probably mean the foreign services that advertise to work with, let's say, 400 'writers' but only a few (so called 'top-tier writers') are capable of writing a sentence without a serious grammatical or logical error. And their 'quality assurance managers' very often hardly understand any English (but since they are friends or family members of the owners, they have been promoted to 'managerial' positions). It's a slippery slope, indeed.

The bottom line is, the 'Quality Assurance' method imposed by some of the non-US / non-UK services is a joke because it's performed by the weakest links, ie. people who have no idea what constitutes high research or writing quality.

This is true. But there is at least one Ukrainian outfit that has heavily invested in the recruitment of a somewhat dependable "Quality Assurance" team. This tier of "experienced writers" thoroughly proofreads, edits, and marks the submissions of lower tier writers, then sends back the paper with comments for amendments. The fuel driving this "team" may be wrongly discharged (they are paid cents per detected error), but these quality managers seem to know their stuff, at least as compared to their average writer

Their weakest links rely on Copyscape for the quality analysis of the document submitted. These TL's only go by the suggestions for "plagiarism" and "advice regarding paragraph improvement" on the software. They do not apply any actual intellect to the QA process because they have no idea what to QA. All these clueless TL's know is that the software is flawless and therefore, they must follow it to the letter. In fact, they are so mindless that all they do is send the writer a copy of the "plagiarism check" with a note for the writer to "revise accordingly". No other communication coming from the TL other than that.

The poor writer then revises the paper, the TL runs it through Copyscape again, then returns it for "further revision". Repeating the process a third time allows the criminal TL to immediately apply a penalty to the writer of up to 100% the cost of the paper all because the writer supposedly "failed QAD Check". However, anybody who isn't an imbecile can easily tell that the TL does not even understand the basic tenets of academic writing and citation rules. The TL may then, rework the order for as little effort as possible and then claim the full amount of the order plus penalties on the writer. Does that sound fair to anybody here?

This is very true, but not for all the ESL outfits. Like I had mentioned above, there are several companies (I know of one) that have "upped" their game above the notorious average standard to employ 'professional editors' to oversee quality


This is atrocious. It is beyond me why any writer would tolerate this


Beyond barbaric

Last I heard, the TL's of these companies have also been subject to QAD inspections themselves. Apparently, enough writers complained about the scam going on and the companies had to take notice. The writers were starting to refuse to take orders, backing up the server, and causing the company to refund orders. The erring TL's got off with a stern warning and were placed on observation status by the QAD. I still have to find out what happened to the bad TL's. I hope they get fired for their unjust treatment of the writers under their supervision.

The two tier qad is no longer being implemented by writing companies as far as I know. It appears that the system was open to much abuse in the mid management and upper management levels. The writers started quitting and branching out by themselves, leaving the companies with more competitors than they expected. The system only works when dealing with neophyte writers who do not know better and are unfamiliar with the academic writing world. The seasoned ones knew when they were being abused and chose to do something about it.